Vibram FiveFingers Arrived: Review coming soon

I finally received my Vibram FiveFingers KSO from the Champaign
Surplus. I’ll be following the recommended 1-2 hour usage per day
before I start running with them. I’ll try them out at the gym soon
and see how they feel.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

OrangeQC Office Space

http://mattgornick.posterous.com/orangeqc-office-space

This weekend a bunch of us cleaned up the office space at Research Park.  That basically involved taking down all of the cubicles as they were blocking communication and innovation.

Once we setup the space with all of our stuff, I’ll post more pictures.

New Shoes for Barefoot Running (Vibram)

A few months back, I saw a few students wearing a pair of Vibram Five Fingers shoes and I would definitely agree that they are an attention drawer.  For those who’ve never seen them, they looks like a glove that would fit over your foot while leaving spaces for your individual toes.  (See http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/)

I at first dismissed them for a recent fad (similar to the Croc’s), but after reading more and more about the actual mechanics of barefoot running I’ve become interested in them.  Popular Mechanics ran an article a few days ago discussing modern shoe companies vs. barefoot running (http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/sports/4314401.html?page=1) and recently research has been surfacing about the benefits or lack there of additional shock absorption and support.  As humans, we’ve been evolving and modifying our running abilities naturally for thousands of years and thus it seems a little silly that we can’t even run without the evoluvationary advantages that we’ve acquired.

This leads me to Vibram; they are obviously a shoe company that has taken the approach of building shoes for barefoot running and sports.  Their prices are inline with other luxury vendors (Nike, Puma, etc.) while their brand is barely known.  I decided to by a pair of the KSO model to try.

Since I’m a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I had doubts that any nearby store would carry these niche shoes but to my suprise Champaign Surplus had several in stock for me to try on (http://www.champaignsurplus.com/).  They didn’t have the particular pair I wanted, probably because they haven’t sold enough of the shoes to have frequent shipments.  The sales staff was helpful and helped me get sized properly and let me try on a few different pairs.  I tried on a pair of the Vibram Five Fingers Sprint and they felt amazingly comfortable.  At that point, I was sold on ordering myself a pair and trying them out for running and lifting.

I’m currently waiting for my shipment to arrive, but it should be in this week.  Hopefully everything goes alright and I get my new shoes in soon!

Here are some reviews I read before making my purchase:

http://www.keith-in-training.com/2007/03/running-in-vibram-five-fingers-sprint.html
http://mygaragegym.blogspot.com/

Going without Coffee

Recently, I’ve noticed that my daily “school” routine consisted of waking up 1 hour before class, drinking 2 cups of coffee with breakfast, then going to class.  When done correctly, I’ve been able to stay awake, alert, and ready for the day by drinking coffee.

The problem comes when you need coffee to wake up in the morning, so I’ve decided to give up coffee for a while and instead rework my daily schedule as follows:

5:45 a.m. – 6:20 a.m.: Wake up, check stock market, catchup on email, write daily todo’s

6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.: Go to the gym

7:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.: Make breakfast, get ready for the day, pick up Wall Street Journal/check Bloomberg for news

9:00 a.m.+: Go to class

My goal is to replace my need for coffee to wake up with a solid gym workout in the morning and green tea for breakfast.  I’ve read Steve Pavlina article on getting up early (1) so I’m going to be using some of those techniques to reach my goal.

(1) http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-when-your-alarm-goes-off/

Getting back on my A-game

I’ve been on a slight hiatus since last summer and am attempting to get back into the grove of blogging again.  I feel that blogging is a great exercise in expressing my thoughts and opinions, so let’s see how I do.